A. H. Munsell

“ A colorist is keenly alive to these feelings of satisfaction or annoyance, and consciously or unconsciously he rejects certain combinations of color and accepts others. Successful pictures and decorative schemes are due to some sort of balance uniting “light and shade” (value) , “warmth and coolness” (hue) , with “brilliancy and grayness” (chroma) ; for, when they fail to please, the mind at once begins to search for the unbalanced quality, and complains that the color is “too hot,” “too dark,” or “too crude.” ”

“ In the nursery a child learns to use the simple color names red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. When familiarity with the color sphere makes him relate them to each other and place them between black and white by their degree of light and strength, there will be no occasion to revert to vegetables, animals, minerals, or the ever-varying hues of sea and sky to express his color sensations. ”

“ Perception of color is crude at first. The child sees only the most obvious distinctions, and prefers the strongest stimulation. But perception soon becomes refined by exercise, and, when a child tries to imitate the subtle colors of nature with paints, he begins to realize that the strongest colors are not the most beautiful,—rather the tempered ones, which may be compared to the moderate sounds in music. To describe these tempered colors, he must estimate their hue, value, and chroma, and be able to describe in what degree his copy departs from the natural color. ”

“ Quiet Color is the Mark of Good Taste. Refinement in dress and the furnishings of the home is attractive, but we shrink from those who are “loud” in their speech or their clothing. If we wish our children to become well-bred, is it logical to begin by encouraging barbarous tastes? Their young minds are very open to suggestion. They quickly adopt our standards, and the blame must fall upon us if they acquire crude color habits. Yellow journalism and rag-time tunes will not help their taste in speech or song, nor will violent hues improve their taste in matters of color. ”

“ All our color sensations are included in the color solid. None are left out by its scales of hue, value, and chroma. Indeed, the imagination is led to conceive and locate still purer colors than any we now possess. Such increased degrees of color sensation can be named, and clearly conveyed by symbols to another person as soon as the system is comprehended. ”

“ The solar spectrum forms a basis for scientific color analysis, taught in technical schools; but it is quite beyond the comprehension of a child. He needs something more tangible and constantly in view to train his color notions. He needs to handle colors, place them side by side for comparison, imitate them with 21 crayons, paints, and colored stuffs, so as to test the growth of perception, and learn by simple yet accurate terms to describe each by its hue, its value, and its chroma. ”

“ The incongruous and bizarre nature of our present color names must appear to any thoughtful person. Baby blue, peacock blue, Nile green, apple green, lemon yellow, straw yellow, rose pink, heliotrope, royal purple, Magenta, Solferino, plum, and automobile are popular terms, conveying different ideas to different persons and utterly failing to define colors. The terms used for a single hue, such as pea green, sea green, olive green, grass green, sage green, evergreen, invisible green, are not to be trusted in ordering a piece of cloth. They invite mistakes and disappointment. ”

“ It is a degree rather than a quality, as appears in the expressions, intense heat, light, sound,—intensity of stimulus and reaction. Being a degree of many qualities, it should not be used to describe the quality itself. The word becomes especially unfit when used to describe two very different phases of a color,—as its intense illumination, where the chroma is greatly weakened, and the strongest chroma which is found in a much lower value. “Purity” is also to be avoided in speaking of pigments, for not one of our pigments represents a single pure ray of the spectrum. ”

“ Balance of Color is to be sought. Artists and decorators are well aware of a fact that slowly dawns upon the student; namely, that color harmony is due to the preservation of a subtle balance and impossible by the use of extremes. This balance of color resides more within the spherical surface of this system than in the excessive chromas which project beyond. It is futile to encourage children in efforts to rival the poppy or buttercup, even with the strongest pigments obtainable. Their sunlit points give pleasure because they are surrounded and balanced by blue ether and wide green fields. ”

“ The fact that the spectral union of red and green makes yellow is a matter of surprise to practical workers in color who are familiar with the action of pigments, but unfamiliar with spectrum analysis. Yellow seems to them a primary and indispensable color, because it cannot be made by the union of red and green pigments. Another surprise is awaiting them when they hear that the yellow and blue of the spectrum make white, for all their experience with paints goes to prove that yellow and blue unite to form green. ”

“ One student, who never outgrew the habit of giving a purplish hue to all his work, despite many expedients and the use of various lights and colored objects to correct it, is the single exception among hundreds whom it has been my privilege to watch as they improved their first crude estimates, and gained skill in expressing their sense of Nature’s subtle color. ”

“ Thus it becomes evident that, while the color sphere is a valuable help to the child in conceiving color relations, in uniting the three scales of color measure, and in furnishing with its mount an excellent test of the theory of color balance, yet it is always restricted to the chroma of its weakest color, the surplus chromas of all other colors being thought of as enormous mountains built out at various levels to reach the maxima of our pigments. ”

“ The hand thus becomes a color holder, with white at the finger tips, black at the wrist, strong colors around the outside, and weaker colors within the hollow. Each finger is a scale of its own color, with white above and black below, while the graying of all the hues is traced by imaginary lines which meet in the middle of the hand. Thus a child’s hand may be his substitute for the color sphere, and also make him realize that it is filled with grayer degrees of the outside colors, all of which melt into gray in the centre. ”

“ Value is the quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark one. Color values are loosely called tints and shades, but the terms are frequently misapplied. A tint should be a light value, and a shade should be darker; but the word “shade” has become a general term for any sort of color, so that a shade of yellow may prove to be lighter than a tint of blue. A photometric7 scale of value places all colors in relation to the extremes of white and black, but cannot describe their hue or their chroma. ”

“ The musician, besides the study of masterpieces, absorbs the science of counterpoint, and records by an unmistakable notation the exact character of any new combination of musical intervals which he conceives. ”

“ Visual estimates of color, without the help of any standard for comparison, are continually distorted by doubt, guess-work, and the fatigue of the eye. Hardly two persons can agree in the intelligible description of color. Not only do individuals differ, but the same eye will vary in its estimates from day to day. A frequent assumption that all strong pigments are equal in chroma, is 62 far from the truth, and involves beginners in many mishaps. Thus the strongest blue-green, chromium sesquioxide, is but half the chroma of its red complement, the sulphuret of mercury. ”

“ Artists criticise the color schemes of paintings as being “too light or too dark” (unbalanced in value) , “too weak or too strong” (unbalanced in chroma) , and “too hot or too cold” (unbalanced in hue) , showing that this is a fundamental idea underlying all color arrangements.
(76) Let us assume that the centre of the sphere is the natural balancing point for all colors (which will be best shown by Maxwell discs in Chapter V., paragraphs 106–112) , then color points equally removed from the centre must balance one another. Thus white balances black. Lighter red balances darker blue-green. ”

“ Spectral analysis shows that no pigment is a pure example of the dominant hue which it sends to the eye. Take, for example, the very chromatic pigments representing red and green, such as vermilion and emerald green. If each emitted a single pure hue free from trace of any other hue, then their mixture would appear yellow, as when spectral red and green unite. ”

“ When this numbered scale of values is familiar, it serves not only to describe light and dark grays, but the value of colors which are at the same level in the scale. Thus R7 (popularly called a tint of red) is neither lighter nor darker than the gray of N7. A numeral written above to the right always indicates value, whether of a gray or a color, so that R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, R7, R8, R9, describes a regular scale of red values from black to white, while G1, G2, G3, etc., is a scale of green values. ”

“ Middle red balances middle blue-green. In short, every straight line through this centre indicates opposite qualities that balance one another. The color points so found are said to be “complementary,” for each supplies what is needed to complement or balance the other in hue, value, and chroma.
(77) The true complement of the buttercup, then, is not the violet, which is too weak in chroma to balance its strong opposite. We have no blue flower that can equal the chroma of the buttercup. Some other means must be found to produce a balance. One way is to use more of the weaker color. ”

“ As color perception becomes finer, it discards the more 93 crude and violent contrasts. A child revels in strong chromas, but the mark of a colorist is ability to employ low chroma without impoverishing the color effect. As a boy’s shrieks and groans can be tempered to musical utterance, so his debauches in violent red, green, and purple must be replaced by tempered hues. ”

“ Color education begins with ability to recognize and name certain hues, such as red, yellow, green, blue, and purple (see paragraphs 182 and 183) . Nature presents these hues in union with such varieties of value and chroma that, unless there be some standard of comparison, it is impossible for one person to describe them intelligently to another. ”

“ Any color group, whose record must all be written to the right of the centre, is warm, because red and yellow are dominant. One to the left of the centre must be cool, because it is dominated by blue. A group written all above the centre must have light in excess, while one written entirely below is dark to excess. Finally, a score written all in front of the centre represents only strong chromas, while one written behind it contains only weak chromas. ”

“ Music is equipped with a system by which it defines each sound in terms of its pitch, intensify, and duration, without dragging in loose allusions to the endlessly varying sounds of nature. So should color be supplied with an appropriate system, based on the hue, value, and chroma2 of our sensations, and not attempting to describe them by the indefinite and varying colors of natural objects. The system now to be considered portrays the three dimensions of color, and measures each by an appropriate scale. ”

“ Ten differences of hue are as many as a child can render at the outset, yet in matching and imitating them he becomes aware of their light and dark quality, and learns to separate it from hue as value-difference. Middle colors, as implied by that name, stand midway between white and black,—that is, on the equator of the sphere,—so that a middle red will be written R5/, suggesting the steps 6, 7, 8, and 9 which are above the equator, while steps 4, 3, 2, and 1 are below. It is well to show only three values of a color at first ”

“ Pigments are, and will in all probability continue to be, the practical agents of coloristic productions, however reluctant the scientist may be to accept them as the basis of a color system. It is true that they are chemically impure and imperfectly represent the colors of light. Some of them fade rapidly and undergo chemical change, as in the notable case of a green pigment tested 58 by this measured system, which in a few weeks lost four steps of chroma, gained two steps of value, and swung into a bluer hue. ”

“ Or should there be a suite of rooms, it demands that, with variety in each one, they all be brought into harmonious sequence. Thus the study of color finds immediate and practical use in daily life. It is a needed discipline of color vision, in the sense that geometry is a discipline of the mind, and it also enters into the pleasure and refinement of life at every step. Skill or awkwardness in its use exerts as positive an influence upon us as do the harmonies and discords of sound, and a far more continuous one. ”

“ Science describes chroma as the purity of one wave length separated from all others. Other wave lengths, INTERMINGLING, make its chroma less pure. A beam of daylight can combine all wave lengths in such balance as to give the sensation of whiteness, because no single wave is in excess.8
(24) The color sphere (see Fig. 1) is a convenient model to illustrate these three qualities,—hue, value, and chroma,—and unite them by measured scales.
(25) The north pole of the color sphere is white, and the south pole black. Value or luminosity of colors ranges between these two extremes. ”

“ Color balance soon leads to a study of optics in one direction, to æsthetics in another, and to mathematical proportions in a third, and any attempt at an easy solution of its problems is not likely to succeed. It is a very complicated question, whose closest counterpart is to be sought in musical rhythms. The fall of musical impulses upon the ear can make us gay or sad, and there are color groups which, acting through the eye, can convey pleasure or pain to the mind. ”

“ Children have made every example on this plate, with no other material than the five crayons of middle hue, tempered with gray and black. A Color Sphere is always kept in the room for reference, and five color balls to match the five middle hues are placed in the hands of the youngest pupils. Starting with these middle points in the scales of Value and Chroma, they learn to estimate rightly all lighter and darker values, all weaker and stronger chromas, and gradually build up a disciplined judgment of color. ”

“ It will be remembered that the chroma of the sphere ceased with 5 at the equator. The color tree prolongs 24 this through 6, 7, 8, and 9. The branch ends carry colored balls, representing the most powerful red, yellow, green, blue, and purple pigments which we now possess, and could be lengthened, should stronger chromas be discovered.12
(35) Such models set up a permanent image of color relations. Every point is self-described by its place in the united scales of hue, value, and chroma. These scales fix each new perception of color in the child’s mind by its situation in the color solid. ”

“ Any real progress in color education must come not from a blind imitation of past successes, but by a study into the laws 48 which they exemplify. To exactly copy fine Japanese prints or Persian rugs or Renaissance tapestries, while it cultivates an appreciation of their refinements, does not give one the power to create things equally beautiful. The masterpieces of music correctly rendered do not of necessity make a composer. ”

“ The Tuning of Color cannot be left to Personal Whim. The wide discrepancies of red, yellow, and blue, which have been falsely taught as primary colors, can no more be tuned by a child than the musical novice can tune his instrument. Each of these hues has three variable factors (see page 14, paragraph 14) , and scientific tests are necessary to measure and relate their uneven degrees of Hue, Value, and Chroma. ”

“ Experiments with variable masks for the selection of color intervals, such as have been described, soon stimulate the imagination, so that it conceives sequences through any part of the color solid. The color image becomes a permanent mental adjunct. Five middle colors, tempered with white and black, permit us to devise the greatest variety of sequences, some light, others dark, some combining small difference of chroma with large difference of hue, others uniting large intervals of chroma with small intervals of hue, and so on through a well-nigh inexhaustible series. ”

“ A single color, like that of a violet, a rose, or a buttercup, appears as a dot on the score, with a numeral added for its chroma. A parti-colored flower, such as a nasturtium, is shown by two dots with their chromas, and a bunch of red and yellow flowers will give by their dots a color passage, or “silhouette,” whose warmth and lightness is unmistakable. ”

“ Examples are constantly found of the mental blur caused by such unfortunate terms, and, since misunderstanding becomes impossible with measured degrees of hue, value, and chroma, it seems only a question of time when they will take the place of tint, tone, shade, purity and intensity. ”

“ It is true that a certain red, green, and blue can be united in such proportions on Maxwell discs as to balance in a neutral gray; but the slightest change in either the hue, value, or chroma, of any one of them, upsets the balance. A new proportion is then needed to regain the neutral mixture. This has already been shown in the discussion of triple balance (paragraph 82) .
(148) Harmony of color has been still further complicated by the use of terms that belong to musical harmony. Now music is a measured art, and has found a set of intervals which are defined scientifically. ”

“ A case of total color-blindness is very rare, but a few 95 are on record. When a child shows deficient color perception,34 a little care may save him much discomfort, and patient training may correct it. If he mismatches some hues, confuses their names, seems incapable of the finer distinctions of color, study to find the hues which he estimates well, and then help him to venture a little into that field where his perception is at fault. ”